Palm Beach County entrepreneur: Stop griping about schools

Schools often are characterized as a weak link in Palm Beach County’s economic development efforts. But entrepreneur Dan Cane says business leaders and parents who complain about the quality of public education are misguided.

Cane, founder of Blackboard Inc. and now head of Boca Raton software firm Modernizing Medicine, was one of the entrepreneurs who spoke at a Business Development Board event today in West Palm Beach. Cane said Palm Beach County schools get a bad rap.

“Stop propagating the myth that South Florida has a bum education system,” Cane said. “We don’t. We have a great education system.”

Cane attended Lake Worth High School before going to Cornell University.

Two of the county’s public high schools — Suncoast Community High School in Riviera Beach and Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts in West Palm Beach — made the U.S. News 2012 list of America’s top high schools. Suncoast placed 28th and Dreyfoos 60th in the national ratings of 21,000 public high schools.